Bach, Beethoven and the Boys - Tenth Anniversary Edition!: Music History As It Ought To Be Taught

133 Pages·1996·1.87 MB·English

by  David W. Barber

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title: Bach, Beethoven and the Boys : Music History As It
Ought to Be Taught
author: Barber, David W.; Donald, David C.
publisher: Sound And Vision
isbn10 | asin: 0920151108
print isbn13: 9780920151105
ebook isbn13: 9780585223063
language: English
subject Music--History and criticism, Music--Humor, Composers--
Humor.
publication date: 1996
lcc: ML65.B1947 1996eb
ddc: 780/.9
subject: Music--History and criticism, Music--Humor, Composers--
Humor.
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Bach, Beethoven and the Boys

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Bach, Beethoven and the Boys
Music History As It Ought to Be Taught
David W. Barber
Sound and Vision
Toronto

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Page I
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Author's Note & Acknowledgements III
Preface VI
Getting the Ball Rolling
Early Music 1
Now We're Getting Somewhere
Josquin 11
Palestrina 13
Gesualdo 17
A Few Englishmen
Byrd 25
Clarke 28
Purcell 29
Going Baroque
Monteverdi 37
Vivaldi 41
Bach 45
Handel 53
Some Classic Examples
Haydn 65
Mozart 70

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Page II
Those Romantic Types
Beethoven 79
Wagner 84
Brahms 90
Follow the Leider
Schubert 97
Schumann 101
The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming
The Mighty Five 109
Tchaikovsky 114
A Ridiculously Short History of Opera
Opera 121
The Mess We're in Now
Stravinsky 129
Schoenberg 132
The English Country Gardeners 135
Ives 138
Where Do We Go from Here?
Cage 143
Coda 146

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Page III
AUTHOR'S NOTE & ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
When I was studying music at Queen's University (believe it or not, I did earn an honors B.Mus. degree, with a
concentration in voice performance and music history), one of my music-history professors gently pulled me aside
one day and told me that, although my work was good, I was "too easily distracted by the non-essentials." This
book will, I suppose, only confirm that judgment.
I feel it's important to stress that the historical information in this book is all true (well, almost all of it is true).
When Bach left Cöthen for Leipzig, he really did have 11 linen shirts "at the wash." If you don't believe me you
could look it up for yourself.
Some well-meaning former friends of mine who read the manuscript in preparation made the comment that they
found all the footnotes distracting. If you have this problem, too, please feel free to ignore the footnotes. But I warn
you, you'd be missing some of the best parts.1
Thanks to the usual round of friends and relations for moral support and patiently enduring my historicomical
ramblings and non sequiturs, and to Geoff and Jacky Savage of Sound And Vision and Dave Donald for his
illustrations and expertise.
I'm glad for this 10th-anniversary edition, which offers the chance to correct many niggling errorswithout (I hope)
introducing any new ones.
DWB
Kingston, 1986; Toronto, 1996
1 Alternatively, you could read only the footnotes and ignore the main body of the text. Suit yourself.

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Page IV
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Barber is a journalist and musician and the author of five other humorous books about music. Formerly the
entertainment editor of the Kingston Whig-Standard, he now divides his time between working as a copyeditor at
the Toronto Globe and Mail and, with his wife, Judy Scott, operating their bookstore/café, White Knight Books
and The Dormouse Café, in Westport, Ont. As a composer, his works include two symphonies, a jazz mass based
on the music of Dave Brubeck, a Requiem, several short choral works and numerous vocal-jazz arrangements. In
his spare time he is an avid kayaker and reader of mysteries and enjoys performing with his vocal-jazz group,
Barber and the Sevilles.
ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR
Dave Donald can't remember when he didn't scrawl his little marks on most surfaces, so it doesn't come as much of
a surprise that he now makes a living doing just that. He is currently freelancing his way through life and doing all
the things he wanted to do if he didn't have a full-time job. Dave is an avid music listener who likes to look for the
funny side in anything. Classical music gives him lots to look at. This book represents his second illustrative
collaboration with David Barber.

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Page V
PREFACE
It was high time somebody did for the history of music what Messrs Sellar and Yeatman did for the history of
England. Those of you learned enough to know 1066 And All That will remember that Julius Caesar came to
Britain and found the woad-painted inhabitants "weeny, weedy and weaky" and that the Romans were Top Nation
at the time because of their classical education. Anglo-Saxon England had kings with names like Filthfroth and
Brothelbreath. William-and-Mary were stuck together like copulating dogs, and so on. And all that. Without the
benefit of a collaborator, David W. Barber has ranged a bigger world than England and come up with a work
funnier than that classic misguide to historical truth. He has done the job, and nobody else has to do it now.
The point I want to make now before you meet B. and B. (to say nothing of the B. named Johannes and for that
matter, the one called Benjamin or Bela) is that what you will be laughing at is the truth. There is not a single false
note in this short-playing record. If Barber says that Richard Wagner was born in 1813, you can take it that he was.
Check in Grove's twenty-volume Dictionary of Music and Musicians if you like, but the effort, to say nothing of
the money, won't procure you a more accurate date. If he says that Stravinsky's Rite of Spring was first performed
in Paris in 1913, there is no need for you to consult my father, who swore he was there. You can't consult him,
anyway, for he has joined the great democracy of the dead wherein cinema pianists (my father was one of those)
lie snugly with virtuosi, John Lennon and academic stretto-wanglers. Barber, however, tells us something you
won't find in Grovenamely, that Nijinsky made an erotic gesture during the performance and this did not please the
Parisians, who knew all about erotic

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Page VI
gestures but, with Gallic savoir-faire, liked to keep them in their place or places, one of which was not the opera
house.
That Barber was the one man for this sane and demented history should have been apparent to all who consulted A
Musician's Dictionary, which contains such wisdom as "English Horn: A woodwind instrument so named because
it is neither English nor a horn. Not to be confused with the French Horn, which is German" and "Wrong Notes: it
must be understood that this is a relative term, and applies only to those examples performed by someone else.
Wrong notes performed by oneself are always referred to as ornaments." The Barber history, which is ready to
explode on you as soon as you have read, if you have, I don't care much anyway, this preface, is equally wise,
meaning mad. With music the two terms do not square up to each other in anything like a meaningful opposition.
Wise men look like Beethoven, meaning they didn't wash and have lost their hair brush, and Beethoven was
certainly mad. I mean, you have to be mad to practise an art that doesn't know why it exists in the first place. I
mean, we know what hamburgers are for, also sex, but we don't know the purpose of music. That's why we have
Muzak, which knows all too well why it exists. It exists primarily because nobody knows how to switch it off.
By a curious chance (I do not joke, any more than Barber does) I got up at five this morning because my cough
was keeping my sleeping partner awake (my wife, if you must know). As any musician will tell you, there is only
one thing to do when you wake at five, and that is to compose a fugue. I composed a fugue, and then the mail
came, with Barber's typescript. It is a fugue for four voices, in A minor. It is the twenty-second fugue I have
written in little over a week. God knows why I am writing fugues. It is certainly not to awaken the sleeping soul of
Bach. Fugue is something that gets into you and, when one has composed forty-eight of the bastards, flies, or
fugues, out again. Barber's book confirmed that I am not alone in my madness. It made me feel better, and it cured
my cough.
No, it (damn and blast it) didn't.
So my heartiest commendation of an admirable work of scholarship"gapped," true, as academics say of melodies
that are, in fact, gapped but, where there are no gaps, crammed with accuracy. I will not say again that it is funny,
since this will com-

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Page VII
pel you to set your jaw and dare Barber to make you laugh. Take it for its truth. When you have read it you will
know a great deal of musical history. Whether you will think it worth knowing is another matter. For music is
another name for dementia. Who would spend his life spinning combinations of twelve notes if he were sane?
There are better things worth spinning, but I can't think just what they are at the moment. I got up too early.
© Anthony Burgess
Monte Carlo, December 7, 1985

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